Background and Purpose: The wills of martyrs from the Iran-Iraq War contain a wide range of educational, devotional, ethical, political, and cultural concepts. Access to these concepts in a systematic manner remains limited. This study was conducted to design a domain-specific ontology for organizing the semantic content of these documents. The ontology aims to support structured access and improve analytical approaches for research and cultural use.

Method: A mixed-methods approach was used, combining qualitative content analysis and domain modeling. The study analyzed a corpus of 1,000 martyrs’ wills. Text processing and concept extraction were performed using Python to ensure consistency and reproducibility. The extracted data were documented in structured spreadsheets and validated by experts in both domain knowledge and ontology engineering. The ontology was developed following the seven-step methodology of Noy and McGuinness (2001) and implemented in Protégé 5.6.4 using the OWL language.

Findings: The ontology includes 8,096 concepts, organized into 6 main classes and 2,410 subclasses. It contains 439 object properties and 26 data properties that represent semantic relationships across thematic dimensions. In addition, 17 annotation properties and 358 instances were defined to support documentation and contextual representation. Multiple types of conceptual graphs were generated to visualize relationships among concepts.

Conclusion: The ontology provides a structured framework for organizing information from martyrs’ wills. It enables the development of semantic retrieval systems and natural language processing tools for this domain. Beyond its technical function, the ontology can serve as a cultural infrastructure. It supports the preservation of spiritual and ethical teachings, promotes awareness of martyrs’ values, and contributes to the continuity of their legacy in society. Therefore, the ontology functions both as a research instrument and as a medium for cultural transmission.